SALES & SALES EXCELLENCE
What Makes a Bad Sales Meeting?
Is your sales team guilty?
Setting the Scene
The client returned to their desk, 10-Minutes to the hour. It was a comfortable desk, screen mounted, Bluetooth keyboard free of cables. A bright office full of natural light due to extra large windows and a seat over-looking the car park with green hills and mountains in the distance, often having snow-capped peaks come the autumn and winter.
The company also had a good atmosphere. Fellow staff always saying hello, musing politely at the coffee machine with a genuine interest in each other’s roles and personal lives, well away from office politics and gossip. The company was growing, so all felt good on a reasonable mid-week day with no dramatic causes for concern. Yet the client was nervous.
The Weekly Management meeting had, quite rightly, put a focus on reducing costs yet maximising profit. Largely set against a backdrop of economic concerns but also to win an edge over the competition. There was going to be laser-light focus on ‘Costs vs. Profit’ for the next few months to protect the company’s growth but also jobs, especially if markets did start to recede. Yet this wasn’t the reason for the client’s nervousness.
The Background
The nervousness came from the wonderment of whether, at the turn of the hour and the start of their next meeting, the Sales Representative they had invited for a call was going to add any value or instead, be like the two others from earlier in the week.
Starting meetings being polite but proceeding into being pushy really doesn’t cut it anymore and when, quite obviously, no company or client research had been done beforehand, instead turning-up with a pitch and infamous Slide-Deck.
Was this, the third meeting out of three, going to end with the same conclusion of wasting time and awkward endings of saying no without offending, when offence had already been caused due to no preparation??
Was this going to result as an even more awkward ‘nothing to report’ category at next Monday’s Management Meeting? The routes to salvation, of being able to avoid all such issues, was now resting on this next anticipated meeting with a person as yet unknown. Now at 5-Minutes to the hour, anxiety was actually starting to build.
The backdrop to this story is not, what many may have started to guess, the resistance and fear of commitment that many ‘clients’ and ‘customers’ feel before they enter a Sales Meeting or start to get ‘pitched’.
The Anticipation
Nobody likes to be ‘sold to’ but we’re happy to undergo these processes when we want, need or desire something, entering the ‘Marketplace’ and purchasing phases for said goods. Instead, the backdrop to this particular piece is the sheer level of disappointment a client feels when a meeting commences and falls way lower than expected.
Being unprepared for Sales Meetings, especially with a new client, is close to being unforgivable.
When a client reserves time in their diary giving you the chance to commence a relationship and even profit from the experience, it goes without saying it’s on the same terms of turning-up on time to dinner, a first date or even ensuring you don’t arrive late to present your department’s positive figures at next month’s Board Meeting, giving you the chance to shine. Yet how often do Sales People NOT do this?
Using the first meeting as an exploratory meeting in the hope of making it to ‘next steps’ really, really doesn’t cut it anymore, especially not with the range of information and tools available to us online, let alone a company’s Marketing or Market Research department.
The Consequences
A broad-scale pitch using a Slide Deck without checks or soft closes, especially done before any relationship has been formed, takes presumptions beyond levels of cheek and begs the question …would you buy from a person that tried this with you? The answer, I would guess, is most certainly not!! Yet this happens time and time again, day in, day out.
Even the lack of consideration that if the occasion is going to be framed as ‘no use’ and puts the client in an uncomfortable position is reprehensible.
Being thrown into the spotlight of needing to find a miracle solution the week after with no other meetings booked is not a good situation to be in.
Causing the client to work two or three late nights to save their reputation, all at the expense of not seeing spouses or young children until the weekend begs the additional question of whether that particular Sales Person deserves the right to be invited at all, let alone to be in a Sales role. Yet how often does this occur, week in, week out? Again, very often.
Hero Sales Activity
Real Sales activity, the type that actually adds value, is not arriving on time and having a pitch, nor a Slide Deck, nor even ascertaining a client’s ‘Point of Pain’ (for they can tell you that in all of 30-Seconds) …it’s about giving respect to the backdrop, understanding the client and company and paying greater dividend to the one being paid towards them for being invited.
Without any of this, nothing will happen and the client will continue their search, with the exerts of pain and embarrassment, continually hoping to find that one Sales Person who respects the invitation bestowed of them.
Life or Death Scenario
Worst-case scenario is the client cancels the Sales or Purchasing requirements on the remits of saving money, being an opportunity missed. Every Sale or Purchase, even when defined as Cost, should have Returns-on-Investment attributed, therefore being opportunities to both sides.
So here’s the question …if you work in Sales or maybe are a Sales Manager, are you or your Sales Team taking the additional steps to REALLY MAKE A DIFFERENCE, or are sales efforts purely just going through the motions, with minimum client engagements and low to average sales conversions??? A question that may just need to be asked.
Thank you for reading this article, an experimental feature crossing descriptive text with professional backgrounds and circumstance. Feel free to Follow or let’s connect on LinkedIn, it will be great to have your company.
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